THIS ONE ALL PAPELBON

For the first time in his young career, the Red Sox closer has blown consecutive save opportunities and lost both games.

On Wednesday against the Tigers, he could point to bad luck as the culprit.

Friday night, after allowing a walk-off, two-run single to Mike Lamb with two out in the ninth, sending the Twins to a 7-6 victory before 25,747 at the Metrodome, Papelbon put the onus squarely on his shoulders.

"The last outing I had, they had three bloop hits and a broken bat hit," Papelbon said. "You can't do anything about that. Tonight, I could do something about that. Tonight's a totally different story. This has no correlation with the last outing.

"I've got one out to get. It's a pretty simple game. I've got one out to get, I've got to execute a pitch with two strikes and the job is done. It's that simple. I didn't do that."

Papelbon (2-2) allowed a leadoff single to Delmon Young in the ninth, with Matt Tolbert moving Young to second with a sacrifice bunt. Adam Everett fouled out to Kevin Youkilis, then Young stole third before rookie Carlos Gomez drew a walk on a full count after falling behind 1-and-2.

It was Papelbon's second walk of the season, and the first since the first batter he faced on March 25 in Tokyo. Gomez then stole second without drawing a throw.

"You never are happy letting a lead run [move up], but considering all the options we had, the biggest thing is we don't want to have someone vacating their position," Red Sox manager Terry Francona said. "There's about three different reasons. Who's running, who's pitching, giving up a hole."

Papelbon got ahead of Lamb 1-and-2, before Lamb dunked a splitter into shallow left, with the speedy Gomez easily scoring from second.

"It's frustrating right now, just for the simple fact that I'm throwing good pitches, I'm just not finishing them right now and executing them all the way through the strike zone," Papelbon said. "I'm sitting there in a comfortable position where I want to be with one out to get and I don't finish a split-finger and he speeds the bat up and he bloops it over the third baseman. It's simple."

Papelbon was 10-for-10 in save opportunities this season, and had saved 12 in a row since last September, before blowing saves twice in the past three games. But his problems might have begun well before that. A noted strikeout pitcher, Papelbon has just one strikeout in his past six appearances, a total of 23 batters faced.

"I'm not finishing my pitches and when I don't finish a pitch, it's not going to finish through the strike zone the way I want it to," Papelbon said. "It's hanging in the strike zone. Not the sharpness I want. I've got to get back on track in order to be able to do that."

The loss mirrored Wednesday's 10-9 loss in Detroit. Like Wednesday, Julio Lugo made a key error that led to two runs.

But this time, Lugo's bobble, his 11th error of the season, occurred in the second inning, not the ninth. That gave the Red Sox plenty of time to wipe the gaffe off the board.

And like Wednesday, the Red Sox erased a large deficit to take the lead into the ninth, scoring four runs in the fifth inning to go ahead 6-5, putting starter Jon Lester in position to earn the victory, despite allowing five runs, three earned, in 5 1/3 innings.

Mike Lowell drove in the first two runs with a bases-loaded double to make it 5-4, then scored on a wild pitch to put the Red Sox ahead.

David Aardsma and Hideki Okajima pitched 2 2/3 scoreless innings in relief to give Papelbon a chance to redeem himself for Wednesday's loss, with Okajima pitching a scoreless seventh and eighth.

"[Lester] gave us a chance," Francona said. "I thought he started to get into a rhythm, but the way the game was going, what the score was, we go to our bullpen and Oki was unbelievable. That he gave us two innings in that situation allowed us to have a chance to win that game."